🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 7 May 1994 Rob.vanHoboken@RC.TUDELFT.NL wrote:

> Delft University of Technology chose MICS some 5 years ago, when faced
> with the requirement to bill for the use of MVS, VM/CMS, VAX, print
> services, and staff services.  Since then, they dropped the VM/CMS and
> VAX services, but added Unix (Convex) accounting to MICS using the user
> component interface in MICS.  MICS is a rich architecture to store MVS
> data and data from other sources (VAX is now supported), and one of the
> applications running on MICS is accounting.  MICS comes from Legent.
>
> If your only application is accounting, MICS is too much for you (and
> too costly).  You may want to look at MXG from Barry Merrill PH.D. and
> now sold by SAS Institute as CPE.  SAS added a backend that can be used
> for accounting.  My experience with accounting code is you always end up
> rewriting the reporting modules and the cost assignment algorithm.
> Delft U. did so with MICS, and would do so with MXG.
>
> The cost of MXG is negligible compared to its functions.  It would
> take about the same effort to keep operational as MICS (i.e. building
> an accounting application for MXG from scratch?), MICS takes a lot
> of time to run every day and a lot of head aches to convert from one
> service release to the next.
>
> If I were faced with an MVS accounting project I would no longer use a
> "ready made" package like MICS of KOMAND, because I've exeprienced the
> problems of adding your management's requirements into a fixed frame
> program.  I would use MXG as the data collector, and write the reporting
> code in SAS myself.
>
> Rob van Hoboken
> Delft University of Technology
>

Rob,

we are using KOMAND, but are looking at our computer billing strategy for
our MVS system.

I ran your note past our staff, who contacted SAS. SAS says they do not
have a cross-charging/accounting module in CPE. Also, they say CPE is
not the same as MXG. In fact, you need MXG to extract the data from IBM's
SMF, for CPE to work.

What is the 'backend that can be used for accounting' that SAS has added ?

Please respond soon, please ! We are very interested !!!!

Brian Risman
brisman@io.org
Bank of Montreal
Toronto CANADA